Capital AudioFest 2023

Can you judge an exhibitor's products by the music he plays? Perhaps not, but when I walk into a room playing "Hotel California," that mad percussion ditty "Music for Bang, Baa-Room and Harp," 90s grunge (footnote 1), or God No! Jazz at the Pawnshop, it's all I can do to stay put and not scream.

Treehaus Audiolab’s Richard Pinto has the good taste to not play absolute drek and the astute inner vibrations to play music that sounds good, is well-recorded, interesting, and thoughtful. I heard Fleet Foxes from the hallway. As I entered Pinto’s room, he continued with St. Vincent’s amazing “Pills.” He entertained my request for Father John Misty.

Pinto makes his complete system, including the stunning Phantom of Luxury Field Coil Loudspeakers ($29,000/pair), which employ Atelier Rullit 10" full-range field-coil drivers, 15" Acoustic Elegance woofers, and Fostex T900A Super Tweeters. The rest of the system was the Treehaus Audiolab Preamplifier ($16,000), 300B Amplifier ($17,500), and Moving Coil SUT ($3000). Treehaus products utilize top-level internal components such as Finemet interstage and output transformers, Western Electric 300B power tubes, and Elma switches.

A Meitner MA3 DAC played digits, a Microseiki BL91 spun records, a Fidelity Research FR64S tonearm deployed a Hana Umami Red MC cart, and a Ken Tanaka LCR did phono-stage duties. Iconoclast silver-plated TPC Generation 2 speaker cables, silver plated TPC Generation 1 speaker cables, UPOCC RCA interconnects, and BAV power cables wired up the works. Purifi Class D woofer amplifiers, MiniDSP Active Crossover/EQ for Woofers, and a PS Audio P3 power conditioner completed setup.

FOOTNOTES
1 While not much of it is demo-quality, I'd probably regard some '90s grunge as a welcome relief from typical audiophile fare.-Jim Austin